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He is probably Canada’s most prolific sperm donor, but nobody can tell him how many children he has fathered. That keeps him up at night.

The businessman, who is not being identified to protect his privacy and that of his biological children, says he was misled by the Toronto sperm bank he visited regularly over a period of five years more than 20 years ago.

He now knows that is far from true. Because some families of his biological children have contacted him and others have formed support groups, the donor knows he is the biological father of many more than 15 children.

“It is probably approaching 50,” he says. And there could be many more. “I would never have agreed to it if they had told me it was going to be 50 to 100. It keeps me awake at night. I am in therapy.”

Among his offspring are children whose parents were patients of Ottawa’s Dr. Norman Barwin. They were inseminated with the donor‘s sperm without their knowledge.

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The fact is, there are no regulations in Canada around how many times a single donor’s sperm can be used, something donor-conceived adults and families say is crucial. Many sperm banks in Canada and the U.S. have voluntary limits of around 10-15, but there are no standards for monitoring births resulting from donor semen, so it is likely they don’t know.

The donor says he asked ReproMed, the Canadian sperm bank where he was a donor, if there had been any live births from his sperm. He was told they could not tell him that. He has since been told that the sperm bank limits the number of children from one donor to 10-15 in a single geographic area.

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ReproMed did not return calls requesting comment.

Another thing that keeps the donor up at night is learning that he was implicated in the Barwin case. Ottawa’s Dr. Norman Barwin, once a popular fertility doctor, has had his licence suspended and has been fined by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario for using his own sperm without patient’s knowledge and mixing up sperm in other cases.

Dr Norman Barwin makes his way to the disciplinary hearing at the College of Physicians and Surgeons in 2013.Chris Young/Chris Young

Barwin is the biological father of at least 11 children of former patients. In other cases, children of his former patients are not related to their fathers, as planned.

One of those former patients is Patient J who learned that both of her children are not related to their father, as the family was led to believe by Barwin. The prolific donor, she has since discovered, is the biological father of both of her children.

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Patient J tracked down the donor to explain her family’s situation and to learn more about his health history. The donor says it was scary to learn that his sperm had been used without the patient’s consent.

“I felt like I was complicit.”

He is also upset, he says, to learn that some of the children who are the products of his sperm have genetic ailments. He has sent contact information to some families of his donor children to help them learn more about their health history.

“It mortifies me to think there are health issues (among these children), some that it is likely I passed along. I am struggling with this.”

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Although his immediate family has always been healthy, some genetic ailments run in his extended family.

Donor advocates want records kept for 100 years and regularly updated with new health information. They point out that the health of a donor when he is in his 20s likely looks very different than the health of a donor later in life. Canada recently introduced regulations that would require donor records to be maintained for 10 years.

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The donor, meanwhile, says he began donating sperm to help people. He had friends who had struggled to conceive and was certain that he and his wife were not going to have biological children, which they haven’t, so he decided to donate to help others.

Although it began as a way to help, he acknowledges the money — $75 a visit, meant to cover expenses — became his ultimate motivation.

“That was, in hindsight, my biggest motivation.” He says he likely earned $25,000 as a donor — enough to install new hardwood floors in his suburban home.

Now, he says, he is undergoing therapy to deal with the fallout from that decision to be a donor and the way the fertility industry in Canada is run.

He notes that the breeder where he recently bought a Labrador retriever puppy is required to keep better records than sperm banks using human semen.

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